For many years, we have admired Donald Rumsfeld ’54 as a distinguished,
self-made man. He came to Princeton without the connections to the nation’s
elite and the financial support enjoyed by most of his peers in those
years. He studied and wrestled hard here, became a Navy flier, and quickly
established himself in positions of leadership in the nation’s legislative
and executive branches. What better role model for Princeton students?

How sad, then, to see this man now as the pivotal member of a “gang
that could not shoot straight,” as conservative columnist and Princetonian
George Will *68 recently described the White House’s and Pentagon’s
management of Iraq’s occupation.

At the core of Secretary Rumsfeld’s errors, many observers on
both sides of the political aisle believe, is his stubborn resistance
to staffing the occupation of Iraq adequately. It seems to be an inborn
stubbornness, to which Mark Bernstein ’83 alludes as well in his
recent article on the secretary (Feature, Oct. 6).

Although former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger’s report
on Abu Ghraib delicately dances around Secretary Rumsfeld’s role
in that prison scandal, he does report that the command of General Sanchez
was so “under-resourced” that not enough attention could be
paid to operations at that and other prisons in Iraq. The resulting damage
to America’s image in the world is incalculable.

Last November, a number of newspapers, including the Financial Times
and the New York Times, reported that hundreds and possibly thousands
of Saddam Hussein’s ammunition dumps —many of them known to
U.S. troops —had been left unguarded during most of 2003, for want
of troops to take on that important task. America’s enemies in Iraq
could help themselves at these dumps like customers in a supermarket without
a check-out counter. What secretary of defense could possibly expose his
troops to such a danger, not even to dwell upon the fact that American
soldiers still die over there in unarmored Humvees?

We can appreciate that many of the secretary’s friends will take
umbrage at these remarks. With a son (Mark ’01) who already has
served two tours of duty as a Marine in Iraq, however, we are not that
quick to overlook these management gaffes. The “gang that cannot
shoot straight” has cost our family too many sleepless nights.

Uwe E. Reinhardt
James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Woodrow Wilson School

There’s a very important lesson that Donald
Rumsfeld ’54 didn’t learn at Princeton: If you intimidate
subordinates they will tell you what you want to hear, not what you need
to know. Why has the American military leadership in Iraq failed to request
the number of troops necessary to subdue the insurgents? Because Secretary
Rumsfeld effectively preempted such “unnecessary” requests
by taking a firm public position to the contrary prior to the outset of
hostilities. As a result, young Americans have died needlessly in Iraq,
and will continue to do so.

How clever to run an article just four weeks before the election that
uses the prism of nostalgia and “early” character divination
to burnish the reputation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ’54!
I had no idea Rummy was such a great guy. This certainly changes my view
of him as the arrogant architect of a failed war strategy and violator
of the Geneva Convention.